THE POLICE STUDENT: Continuing a new series of The Police Student, Policing Insight Academic Editor Dr Carina O’Reilly explores the key issue of ‘What is policing?’ In this article she looks at a range of models that have been used to try to represent or modify how policing works in different countries, and also examines the leading contemporary model of Evidence-Based Policing.
THE POLICE STUDENT: In the first in a new series of The Police Student, Policing Insight Academic Editor Dr Carina O’Reilly explores the key issue of 'What is policing?' – including the definitions of high and low policing, the five approaches to understanding police activity, and the inherent tensions between coercion and legitimacy.
The Police Student: In our continuing series supporting new police degree entry recruits, Policing Insight’s Academic Editor Dr Carina O’Reilly takes a final look at evidence-based policing, and the challenges of taking EBP forwards from research theory to embedded, applied practice within policing organisations.
How to access the The Police Student series
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This series, supporting degree entry recruits to the police service, aims to provide a framework for students as well as highlighting the deep resources of Policing Insight information. Policing Insight is publishing regular in-depth articles, written by Policing Insight’s Academic Editor, Dr. Carina O’Reilly, aimed at promoting new degree recruits’ learning and understanding of policing and how it impacts on the day-to-day delivery of policing.
In addition, we want to direct students to Policing Insight’s wealth of articles and links to content that can aid their studies. including our Weekly Academic Research Summary articles plus the invaluable Media Monitor service providing a searchable database of over 42,000 links to news, opinion, analysis and reports from local, national and specialist press as well as from key police and criminal justice organisations.
Media Monitor – A daily brief and valuable research tool
Our team researches search daily for relevant police and criminal justice content links to news, opinion, analysis and reports from third party sources including local, national and specialist press as well from key police and criminal justice organisations. The researchers tag each post in detail creating a searchable database of over 42,000 links. Use the search filters to return results by keyword/phrase, date, content type, subject, police force and media source and export the results to a PDF report with live links. It’s also a great way to search for Policing Insight content which is also featured.
Weekly Academic Research Summary
This weekly summary curates the key policing-related research that’s been published online each week, with links to the original journal articles, and selected abstracts – plus a short guide outlining how serving police officers and staff can get access, free, to many of the articles listed through the National Police Library. You do not need to be a member of the College to access its library. Click here to view over 150 summary articles
The Police Student Content Schedule
The first tranche of articles published in 2020 focused on elements of Evidence-Based Policing – from the meaning of the term, and its development over the last decades, to why the College of Policing has embedded the use of research evidence into the PEQF curriculum.
Topics ranged from the research available on policing hotspots, and situational crime prevention, to the emerging evidence around body-worn video and other cutting edge technology.
We also looked at the difficulties involved in assessing research evidence in policing work – and why it’s so hard to embed the use of evidence in police organisations. All of these speak directly to elements of the College of Policing’s Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) curriculum, and will help students – and the officers supervising them – understand these key topics and develop their assignments.
The content for 2021 and beyond will focus on the following areas:
1. Key Issues in Contemporary Policing
2. Criminology for police officers
3. Understanding the criminal justice system
4. Researching policing – theories and methods
5. Community and neighbourhood policing
6. Police ethics and standards
7. Policing vulnerability
8. Policing and cyber-crime
9. More specialist items on the curriculum:
Students can supplement the core articles with relevant articles and reports from Policing Insight’s large archive which features over 700 contributors from policing and criminal justice including from police, government, academia, third sector and industry in the UK and around the world. Please use the search box at the top of the page.
Students may also find the Weekly Academic Research article series useful for sign posting the latest police and criminal justice research published.
For a wider and deeper knowledge base, students should use the Media Monitor service which has over 42,000 links to articles and reports from Policing Insight and 3rd party sources. This huge resource can be searched using filters by keyword, date range, content type, subject, police force and media source.
Our researchers have searched the web you don’t have to eg a search on Media Monitor using the tag ‘body worn video’ return several hundred articles and reports that are very relevant whereas the same Google search will require sifting through thousands of irrelevant results to find useful content.
Create your own reports/briefs by exporting the search results to PDF report with live URL links.
‘The Police Student’ page will be a hub for information on the series with the latest articles highlighted here as they are published.
Be sure to sign up for Policing Insight’s weekly newsletter and social media channels to keep up with the latest content as it’s published.
Series Author of The Police Student
Dr Carina O’Reilly is Policing Insight’s Academic Editor. She is also a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Lincoln. Her research interests include neighbourhood policing, confidence and legitimacy. Prior to joining Lincoln, Carina worked at IHS Jane’s for seven years as a writer, editor and senior analyst on European security and organised crime; and subsequently led and taught a range of Policing degrees at Anglia Ruskin University. Carina has a Masters degree from Cambridge University in Social and Political Sciences and holds a Masters in Strategic Studies from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She is also a Labour councillor in Cambridge, and a former Deputy Leader of Cambridge City Council
